Do Women Undermine Each Other?

I have been an ardent feminist since I first read Simone DeBeauvoir’s, “The Second Sex” around 1966. So, it took me many years of being a low-level lackey in the capitalist pecking order to come to the contradictory realization that male bosses tend to be easier to work under than female ones.

This makes sense only in the illogical world of exploitation. Yes, it is a hoop we have all grown accustomed to jumping through and by hoop I mean Heritage of Oppression. As Bob Marley sang: “they take the chains off your body and put the chains on your mind,”Clearly once our minds are conquered, the rulers no longer need actual chains.

Women as bosses are usually harder to work for, especially for other women. They tend feel less secure in positions of power to begin with, so, when they get there, they exert more of a need to prove themselves. Being hard-nosed and to-the-letter strict is a natural outgrowth of this attitude.

I have experienced this with women physicians who have been to say, modifying a prescription slightly to make it more affordable and cost effective, while the male doctors I have gone to don’t even blink at suggestions like this. Of course, men are subjected to a lot less personal scrutiny and are inclined to possess a indefatigable sense of entitlement.

As women we have survived by learning to read the small print of other people’s psychology. Because marriage was the goal for our gender for so many years, we learned, Darwin style, to master the art of passive-aggressive manipulation. While your average heterosexual man, may be a bit thick and a bit of a buffoon, there is a what you see is what you get quality to him that allows, for example, male lawyers to vehemently argue two opposing sides of a legal case in a courtroom and then go to the gym and play racket ball together as though it were the most natural thing in the world. For women with conflicting views, it is more likely that they would dismiss each other coolly when passing in the hall, than to even consider going out for a drink together.

The other huge problem is that everyone is raised to think less of women so both women and men prefer men. Just as every person is socialized to prefer straight folks, and all races conditioned to prefer white people, women consciously or unconsciously assign more status, more credibility to men even when they don’t particularly like them. Female bosses are inclined to be harder on women employees, often subjecting them to a different standard or infantilizing them with micromanagement pettiness that they are embarrassed to apply to males

Sometimes simply the potential friendship model just gets in the way. When I worked at the library, I had a boss who was a part of several communities of which I was also a member. We had been equals in the lesbian community but when she was appointed to head the Gay and Lesbian center at the library, all traces of our human connection vanished.

Of course my boss had to prove herself. And when it comes to love, war or livelihood, fear is firmly in place. Yes, we have to humanize the way we live and it must begin in the family and move to the workplace, an environment in which we spend so many hours of our lives. 

We are not all that far from the world of the 1950s in which I was raised. It was a place where women were sexualized and our opportunities for employment were severely circumscribed. The legacy of our history persists in spite of our best efforts to change it.

Is Cruelty to Workers Behind Workplace Violence?

Another workplace shooting took place in Fresno on November 5th at a chicken processing plant. Three workers were killed and two were injured by a fellow employee with a handgun. According to filmmaker Emil Chiaberi, this pattern of workplace violence has roots in the way employees are treated in this country.

Chiaberi's 2010 film, “Murder by Proxy: How America went Postal,” sheds both light and heat on the phenomena of workplace murders. Beginning with the Royal Oak Post Office massacre of 1991, which caused the expression “going postal” to become a part of American slang, through other workplace attacks, Chiaberi chronicles a history of employee abuse that drives some beyond the limits of sanity to commit appalling and desperate acts.

There is no excuse for these crimes and Chiaberi does not try to present one. But there are reasons and, through interviews, he explains the history of cruelty to workers that is characteristic of the US Postal Service as well as many other working-class jobs.

Since the mid-eighties no workplace protections have been instituted for workers. The climate we now inhabit is overtly hostile to those that make the machine of service or manufacturing run. The post office is a hotbed of extreme stress and discontent for many reasons. Workers are required to keep up with sorting machines, the pace of which are inhuman. Those who deliver mail have speed and safety issues combined. The job requires little skill or training but has good benefits and pays well. In other words, there’s more where you came from is a prevailing mantra.

Workplace scapegoating seems to be a particularly prevalent problem in the postal service and other low-skill level jobs. This is not explained in the film, I assume, because it is not completely understood. But scapegoating, when it works, tends to do two things. One, frighten other workers because the same thing could happen to them. And two, unify folks against a common enemy, the workplace scapegoat.

But many of the workers interviewed see through this ruse and understand the common enemy is their systematic and continual dehumanization. One shooter skipped shooting a boss who simply asked him how his recent eye surgery went.

The fact that workers are people has escaped those who advocate for the business owners and managers. With anti-union politicians like Wisconsin’s governor Scott Walker leading the charge, worker protection is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Films like “Murder by Proxy,” may not change that but at least they can serve as a warning of what may be in store for our increasingly income-skewed society where production and service workers are belittled and their fundamental humanity ignored.

Dehumanization in the Capitalist Workplace

Along with the relatively recent rebirth of a movement against economic injustice has come not only questioning not only of the great wealth divide but also the structure of the capitalist workplace itself. As jobs disappear many are re-examining the hierarchy of the American labor force and formulating ways to make it more just and humane.

Marxist economist Richard Wolff points out that financial transactions don’t work within the family unit because they promote greed and discord, so why would anyone expect these same skewed priorities to function any differently in the workplace?

Capitalism requires all workplace interactions at work to have, at their foundation, the profit motive that requires the maximum accumulation of capital is the goal of any endeavor. In a service industry such as a hospital, library or school, this goal translates to servicing the greatest number of people with the lowest amount of expenditure. This is effected by a work speed up requiring more desk hours, patients and ever-increasing class sizes. In order to enforce this speed-up, the pressure is applied to middle management.

This group consists of folks who are offered extra goodies in exchange for extracting the maximum amount of monetary value from the effort of each worker, like squeezing as much juice as possible from an orange. There are always people willing to control others in return for their own personal comfort but no matter how you slice it, this process is inherently unpleasant. 

In the workplace it is commonly accomplished in one of two ways: manipulation or intimidation. Most often, it winds up being a combination of both. Manipulation includes not only the concept of worker discipline, but the more pleasant aspects of a worker/manager relationship as well. For example, praise for work is included here. While, in some cases, this may be genuine, it also serves the function of motivating the worker to continue to work hard. Intimidation is the method that is more fundamental to the manager/worker relationship. Every interaction at work harbors veiled threats to the survival of the worker because, at any moment, his position could be terminated. In the private sector, where the“employment at will” doctrine prevails, job insecurity creates perpetual stress. It is only with the advent of union protection that working people were granted a bit of relief from this sword of Damocles. 

In an inauthentic, contrived, highly-pressurized environment like the capitalist workplace, collateral damage is everywhere. In public sector work, managers are trained to distance themselves from treating and even perceiving their subordinates as human beings. Training workshops are instituted to instruct them not to engage their underlings in genuine conversations about the actual concerns in their lives. Any opening that might let friendship in must be slammed shut. This would interfere with the credo of putting production first and foremost. A philosophy where suppressing anything close to emotional intimacy is an absolute necessity.

For starters, we can begin rethinking and reworking ideas that have ceased to function properly and replace them with a more beneficial and productive vision. We all deserve something better. How can we create a cooperative workplace? Is there a way to pay people for creative contributions to society, not just wage slavery? A cooperative model would be a good starting point. Those who have a say in their lives at work will be more likely to pull together for a common goal. In a world where everyone can earn compensation for some kind of contribution, there would be no need for every exchange to be predatory or adversarial.

Alliances are stronger than hierarchies. Subordination only breeds varying degrees of resentment.. We are all tired of the tired old degrading capitalist model that is now longer functioning. Instead of begging for a piece of the pie, now is the time to throw out the moldy mess and begin to bake something entirely new.

Old Worker & Young Boss--Capitalist Anomaly

The Industrial Revolution Was
Revolting in Many Ways

Many cultures respect and revere the elderly. From Native American tribal groups, to the Hmong, the Aka and the other hill tribes of Southeast Asia, natural human communities reserve a special place for those who have given their time, their lives to the work of the society.

In the corporate world the basic equation of learning and life experience is turned on its head. Youth is sought after and prized while age is feared and despised. This may stem from denial and fear of mortality, but, whatever the cause, this reality plays out in a tremendously inhumane fashion.

Just as the loss of decent paying jobs with union protections and benefits affects us all, this dismissal of the elderly should threaten the young as well as the old. It is a waving red flag from a future where every worker is both disposable and interchangeable. The "there are more where you came from" philosophy hurts everyone and that indeterminate future always seems to approach more quickly than any of us want to believe it will.

Due to the fact that the massive generation of baby boomers is now beginning to become old people, we are faced with the prospect of a society that includes a high proportion of members who are "of age." Throw in the unbridled capitalism that has reared its very ugly head of late and you have the makings of workplace disaster. Combined with the slash and burn workings of capitalism we have the odd and unnatural coupling of young bosses and old workers.

Many of us from the baby boom generation will continue working long into our "golden years," not because they love their jobs, but because, from a financial perspective, they have no choice. The boss/worker relationship is a strained, anti-human one under the best of circumstances. When that boss is half your age, the contradictions and unfairness of the system are magnified and rendered more unfair and ridiculous than ever.

For those who have children it is a particularly ironic bind. Older folks are often told what to do by their adult children, but most commonly, this is after a degree of impairment has set in. Workplace interactions between those of different status classifications can range from low-stress and facile to hierarchical and difficult. It all depends on the specific work site and its cultural norms.

But if corporate stratification followed our native instincts and promoted the values of learning and experience, we would take instruction from those among us from those who have had the time to acquire knowledge, our elders. Try to envision a society where leadership ability was proven over time and not awarded for superficial, extraneous factors like youth, beauty, family money, gender and ethnicity. You need to have a good imagination to even begin.